


Call It Peace

by HopefulPenguin



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 13:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30022344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulPenguin/pseuds/HopefulPenguin
Summary: The capture of Ba Sing Se was Kuvira's most heralded victory. Her suppression of the tribal insurgency in the southern Si Wong was arguably more definitional.
Relationships: Baatar Jr./Kuvira (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone, first story in this fandom! I wrote this fic because I wanted to explore how we get from the idealistic Season 3 Kuvira to the profoundly authoritarian character in Season 4. The title is from Tacitus’ recording of Calgacus’ speech about the Roman Empire before the Battle of Mons Graupius in 83 AD, where he declared that the Romans ‘make a solitude and call it peace.’ (Yes, I know this is the one bit of Tacitus everyone knows) (but if I can’t be a basic bitch on AO3, where else can I go?) Hope you enjoy! If you do, come hang out with me on Tumblr @the-hopeful-penguin. 
> 
> Content warnings: war, violence, and some cultural chauvinism. Chapter specific warnings will be given.

The air at the crossroads was thick with dust, fumes, and the sweat of a hundred soldiers. Kuvira could smell it, familiar and poisonous. She walked through like a ship through waves. Not heedless, never heedless, but apart from it. The gears and mechanisms of her army. Not its head. 

At the centre of the road, a platoon of tanks - hulking, treaded things of iron, hastily welded pillboxes splashed with the olive green of Gaoling - was grinding forward, waved on by a traffic policewoman in Kyoshi battledress. Behind them, a pair of jeeps with civilian aid personnel idled, engines snarling. Ochre dust, the one real resource the Si Wong had in abundance, settled over their bonnets in a thick layer 

She stepped aside to let a trio of trucks past, escorted through the press by more traffic police. They were coming back from the front, carrying wounded to the aid stations. Her eyes slid away and she forced them back, forced herself to watch, men and women bleeding and burnt, swaddled in already stained bandages, jolted them across sun-baked metal. 

A local merchant, with an ostrich-horse driven cart, had been shoved aside to make room for the army. His birds were squalling loud protests, and he was glaring angrily at them all, scowling face nut-brown against the off-white robe. There was a poetry in that, she thought with a brief, flickering smile. Huan would have appreciated it, in happier times. 

She kept walking. 

Some of the soldiers snapped her salutes as she passed. She returned them briefly, and waved down whatever it was they wanted to say. The formalities of the army, she thought, provided comfort and structure. But she had somewhere to be, and someone to meet, a meeting she would not delay. It had been long enough already, and she chided herself for the thought. She couldn’t be missing him after so short a time. 

The way was clearer once she left the crossroads, the road framed by squat mud-brick houses, one story or two at most, hardened by the sun. Three had wooden window frames, a sign of great wealth for these people, so she had been told on the airship in. It spoke poorly of them. 

The frames rattled as the Gaoling tanks drove past, and then again as a pair of biplanes buzzed low over the town. She didn’t need to look up. The desert tribes had no aerial forces. The dust ate the engines. Baatar had been working on a fix. She picked up the pace, reached and mounted the low town wall. Beneath and behind, another Kyoshi soldier opened the gates to let the vehicles past. 

Baatar was standing on the parapet, looking out over the scrub land to the north. Specks in the distance leaked oily pillars of smoke, like columns holding up the sky - only to be smudged by the wind, a children’s finger-painting in black. The site of the last battle. 

“You look very heroic,” she said, walking up to him. He did, at that, square-jawed and stoic and near passing for a statue. 

That broke his concentration. He turned, and smiled bashfully, scratching his head. Like back at Zaofu, the first time she’d beaten him at pai sho. The memory was pleasant and jarring at once. 

“Reconsidering my haircut,” he said. “I think the flies like it more than me.” 

“Well, I like it, so you should keep it.” There was a moment where she would have kissed him, but work came first. “What’s the situation?” 

He knew the tone and got down to business. Always had. Another endearing quality, besides the terrible jokes. “About the engines or the campaign?” he asked. 

She shrugged minutely. “Both.” 

“Engines are…we’re making progress. Technical details will be in the report. I’ve retrofitted two flights so far, but they can’t fly too low - the sandbenders clog up the intakes. Lost two that way.” 

She could tell from his tone that he meant the pilots as well as the planes. They’d learnt how to say such things in the year and a half since Ba Sing Se. It got easier with practice. 

“As for the campaign, hasn’t Jiang briefed you?” 

“You know how Jiang is,” she said. “Besides, I want to hear it from you.” 

That made him smile, as she knew it would, even though they both knew his strength lay elsewhere. Then his gaze drifted back out over the wall. She followed it. The Gaoling tanks had rumbled out and down the road, top hatches open and commanders looking around them warily, helmets off in the sun. Another truck of wounded was coming back the other way. In the middle distance, biplanes flew circuits, laden with bombs and rockets. An airship, of the 12th Squadron, which had accompanied her down from Inisa State, swam over the next town, twenty fives miles away and clear on the billiard flat surface but for the heat haze. 

“Not well,” he said, after a few moments consideration. “I’ve only been here a week, but - not well. We can’t pin them down. Jiang’s tried hitting them with big sweeps, lots of troops, and they just dance away. Normally we’d negotiate, but - “ he cut the words off and glanced at her. 

Her smile was tight and devoid of any previous mirth. A baring of teeth, a grimace. The first and last embassy had been returned without their heads. That they were so fanatical, so unwilling to talk, angered her almost as much as the action itself. 

“Our supply lines are secure?” she asked. 

“Relatively. But it’s heavy on fuel, and the dust is awful for the engines. We can’t be ambitious, not without more men, and Inisa won’t permit that.”

She’d guessed as much. Jiang had intimated as much. But it mattered to have it confirmed, for all that it was disheartening. The campaign had been grumbling on for four months, first as a brushfire among brushfires, then spiralling. It had put paid to their plans for a railway across the Si Wong, and if things went much further wrong - if the conflict ranged further south and east - it would cut the tenuous logistical link between the south-west and Ba Sing Se. It needed to be resolved. 

“I’m relieving Jiang and taking personal command of this theatre,” she said. “Although you guessed as much.” 

“I doubted you’d continue your efforts in the north without me for long,” said Baatar, his voice full of jesting analytical calm. 

She suppressed a smile, opting instead to merely raise an eyebrow in silent question. “Don’t flatter yourself.” 

“Simply an observation. I haven’t shared the moon-peach tart recipe for a reason.” 

“Traitor,” she said, without heat. He smiled, and her effort at suppressing her own failed in tandem, something that only made him happier. 

“Just using my leverage.” He drew a little closer, a lateral motion. “Like someone taught me.” 

She did kiss him, then. He hugged her, hand skating awkwardly off the armoured panels on her back. There was probably poetry in that, too. But, put simply, she didn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some contextual notes: This fic is half fluffy Baavira ship fic, half imperial counterinsurgency in the Avatar universe - modelled mostly off the French campaigns in Algeria, with some Malaya thrown in as well. I’m not including some of the especially odious parts of these histories; for example, mass executions, torture, and so on (both because I don’t want to write that, and also because I don’t think it fits Kuvira’s character, at least at this stage). But there will be forced displacement, some targeting of civilians, and some racial bias/white man’s burden stuff. I do not condone this in any way. But I do think that it’s an important part of the story’s broader objective of trying to explore how Kuvira went from an idealist and arguably liberator to what we see in Season 4. 
> 
> Also, I am still trying to figure out how to write in 3POV after a long time in 1POV...many apologies...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuvira and Baatar formulate a plan to blast out of the deadlock.

The radio buzzed angrily at the edge of her hearing, an insect she couldn’t quite tune out, the spark for the beginnings of a headache. She closed her eyes. The grid squares were imprinted on her eyelids, cutting apart the landscape of the Si Wong. Green annotations for her units. Red splotches for the enemy. Guesswork. She had to make war with guesswork. 

It had been three days since taking command, and Kuvira was already fed up with the theatre. 

She’d toured the units in the field, each regiment in turn, a cavalcade of battledress and barely-disguised relief that she had come to rescue them. Reports, dozens of them. Soldiers, Reconstruction Bureau officials, the handful of local politicians they’d convinced, huddling in their little mud huts. The paperwork that was the sinews of the army and she felt like it was chains, or stones to weigh her down. Like one of Su’s exercises. 

She pushed the thought aside, mentally and physically, swiping at empty air. Such reminiscence happened when she was tired. And spirits, she was. Three days and no progress. This wasn’t the war or the enemy she wanted. Ba Sing Se had its brutal simplicity. The death of the Noble Alliance had been decisive - dashing - heralded in song. The Si Wong was dust and ghosts and angry glares from half-mad tribesmen rejecting help. Not even help. Rejecting the presence. All they wanted was a railway line, a secure passage of communications, and the savages wouldn’t permit it. 

She opened her eyes and stared blankly down at the map. 

The radio kept chattering. 

There had to be a pattern. A quirk of geography - a centre of gravity - a concentration of effort. All armies had it. All enemies had it. She just had to find it. 

Someone brushed aside the canvas drapes of the tent entrance, olive fabric in whispering susurration. She didn’t turn. Only one person could get past the guards like that. 

He didn’t talk. She hadn’t told him how surprised she was at his gauging of her mood. He got it right, every time. She’d asked before, obliquely, not wanting to offend his pride. A shyness and a weakness uncharacteristic of her which she couldn’t bring herself to hate. He’d just laughed and told her it was long practice. But practice implied mistakes, and if he’d made them, she would have noticed. She had an eye for them. Even in the mirror. Especially in the mirror. 

Strong hands touched her back, pressing down through the uniform with firm gentleness, working through knots and strains. No armour in the way, this time. She leant back, just a fraction, and it took effort not to fall completely into his arms. The map wavered in and out of focus. 

“You know,” she said, after a minute. “That’s really distracting.” 

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, his voice light with the smug joy of someone who knew the answer before they’d asked the question. Baatar was an architect beyond compare. But she thought he might do well as a lawyer, too. 

He kneaded a sore spot on her shoulder. She let out a sighing groan and gave up the fight for dignity, collapsing back against him. “Spirits, no.” 

They stayed that way for some time. She didn’t count it. Irresponsible of her, she knew. She didn’t care. 

Eventually, her back thoroughly relaxed, he detached himself. She turned, then paused, squinting. “Is that head-gear in regulation?” she asked. 

Baatar had acquired, and from where she had no idea at all, a broad-brimmed straw hat, floppy at the edges. Some sort of Republic City fashion, perhaps? Nothing like the conical peasant sun-hats back in Zaofu or the southern provinces. 

His smile was bashful and guilty, and she suppressed her own at the expression. “It keeps the flies off,” he said. “And the sun, too.” 

“Well, it looks ridiculous,” she said, firmly. “Take it off.” 

He did so, stowing it against the side of the tent. “Besides,” she continued, “it made a complete mess of your hair.” She reached up and smoothed it back into place with quick, efficient motions. Rude or short-sighted of him not to think about that. It took her half a minute to rearrange to her satisfaction. 

When she stepped away, he went over to the map table, looked it over quickly, and then back to her. 

“Not making much progress?” 

She allowed herself a frustrated sigh. “No. I’ve charted their attacks over the last two months, and there’s no pattern. They just appear out of the deep desert, wherever we’re weakest. If I didn’t know better, I’d think we’re facing an army of spirits.” Soldier gossip that they were. It had worried her enough to check in with the few sages the Earth Kingdom could still muster, those who hadn’t fled to happier climes, cowards all. 

“I assume bait won’t work?” he asked. 

“Jiang tried it twice, before you arrived,” she said, flipping through a stack of contact reports at the side of the map to find it. “Both times, the ambush failed. Besides, I’m not doing that again.” The words were deceptively light for what they encompassed. There wasn’t another way to talk about it. 

He studied the map more closely, leaning in, eyes focusing, the moments ticking by. She passed them by watching him. 

“I have an idea,” he said, and turned back to her. “When we demolish a house, we take out load-bearing elements.” 

“I know,” she said, perhaps a little too sharply than she ought. Baatar was just trying to be helpful. “Centre of gravity. But capturing their leaders isn’t viable, and if they even have a main force, they’re refusing to give battle.” 

“Civilians,” he said, simply. 

It took her the barest moment to follow his chain of reasoning. Then the idea clicked, and she wasn’t sure if she was happy about it. It was obvious, beyond obvious. The enemy weren’t spirits, they were people. There were oases in the deep desert, they both knew that, and the enemy undoubtedly resupplied from them. Jiang had dismissed holding them, the supply lines were too long, too tenuous. She’d agreed. Throwing trucks and tanks out into the pathless sands was a slow suicide, penny-packeting troops in the enemy’s terrain of choice. 

But the way he’d said it - the way he’d framed it. An architects clarity. 

“It’s not what we set out to do,” she said, after a pause that seemed to engulf eternity. It wasn’t. They were there to unite, to heal, to advance. The tribes stood in their way, but they could be beaten upon the field, convinced to see reason. There had to be a way. But in three days, she hadn’t found even an inkling of it. 

“I know,” he said. “But it will win the war more surely than anything else, and much faster. We have four airships here. Enough to burn the houses, poison the water, detain the civilians. The engineers can build refugee camps.” 

The cogs turned in her head. He was right. Load-bearing. The supports on which the enemy were based. 

“The civilians will have to be well-treated,” she said, not really to him. Laying out preconditions aloud. “And there will be retaliation. But…it’s worth a try.” For Yangchen’s sake, it wasn’t as if she had better ideas. She blinked. The grid squares were still embossed there.

She shook her head. “What would I do without you?” 

He smiled. “Hire a masseuse.” 

She laughed briefly and then raised herself up to give him a kiss. 

Hire a masseuse, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia for nerds - the grid square motif (along with just being how maps work) is a reference to the French practice of quadrillage, dividing a counterinsurgency battle-space into a grid for the purposes of intensive surveillance and policing. Quadrillage developed in the 1954-62 Algerian War, but was based on the ‘oil spot’ principle of progressive territorial control (where the counterinsurgent established security in part of the battle-space and expands outward, pushing insurgents away from civilians, like oil on water) developed by Marshal Lyautey in Madagascar and Morocco. This article by Michael Shurkin in the Texas National Security Review, while focused on the contemporary Sahel, is a great exploration of these concepts: https://tnsr.org/2020/11/frances-war-in-the-sahel-and-the-evolution-of-counter-insurgency-doctrine/


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuvira leads a raid. Content warnings: violence against animals, destruction of civilian property, intentional environmental damage.

“Five minutes to the DZ.” The pilot’s voice had a metallic edge to it, booming in over the speakers in the troop bay. All around her, men and women checked their armour with practiced ease, bending it in small motions, assuring themselves of its flexibility. Across the bay, non-benders ratcheted their crossbows to tension. 

Kuvira rested her head back against the wall, thin metal juddering with the pattern of the engines. Thirty metalbenders, Zaofu originals. Sixty non-benders from A Company, the Gaoling 27th. And ten firebenders pulled from the Naka Volunteers, mounted in two airships. Her nervousness had nothing to do with their dispositions. 

Nervousness wasn’t the word, she thought, closing her eyes. The oasis had been easy to find and easy to reach. The task was simple, and they had more than sufficient force to face down any number of tribesmen, not that battle was expected. 

It was the right thing. She’d gone back over the plans once Baatar had put the idea in her head, revising and considering. It made sense. It was the only thing that did in the damned desert. The earthbenders in the engineering corps had raised the refugee facilities under her personal supervision, spacious stone rooms. The Reconstruction Bureau had brought in teachers, sages sensitive to Si Wong customs, engineers - flown in from the south. The civilians would have better lives. 

She knew that and yet it wasn’t the comfort she had hoped. 

But the right thing was not always the comfortable thing. Suyin had taught her that. 

“Over the DZ. DZ clear. Stand by for drop.” 

She opened her eyes, lamps flashing orange in the wall across from her. The cargo doors at the end of the bay opened, the night air whistling in. Soldiers stood in files on the floor of the ship, queueing for the jump. She joined the leading squad, all metalbenders, cables at the ready. Captain Yan was with him - he had been Private Yan, back then. He nodded and smiled. She returned the nod and not the smile. Shared origin did not mean familiarity. 

“Drop, drop, drop,” the order an invocation. 

She was first out of the ship, cable twisting up and around the projecting bar as she jumped. The sky was a quilt of stars, shocking clarity which she paid only passing mind to. Sixty feet down. Enemy fire? None. The cable hissed out from the harness. There was an art to it, a simple joy in the angles and speed and momentum. The rest of Yan’s squad was spilling out behind her, seeds dropped in deadly casing, blemishes across the sky. 

The ground rushed up. She killed her momentum, cut the cable, and dropped the last foot lightly. 

The oasis was empty. 

Doubt she didn’t much like gripped at her. Had they gotten it wrong? A mirage, or a trick? But - no, there was the lake, product of some ancient spring, seeming pitch black. And at its far shore, a simple earthen barrier, containing dozens of moo-sows and woolly pigs. Beyond them, a row of low mud houses. She shook her head, walking out of the DZ. Did it not occur to them to build more than one storey? Y

Someone touched down directly behind her, heavily, boots crunching on the sand. He came abreast of her - Yan. “They all run?” he asked. 

“Clearly,” she said. “Their spotters are better than we hoped. You have the radio?” 

He wordlessly proffered her the headset, dull, machined steel. One of Baatar’s designs, a doodle in the side of his notebook. In a different place, it would have made her smile. 

“Kuvira to Dao-1,” she said. “DZ clear, oasis deserted. Touch down and commence denial operations, out.” 

She thrust the apparatus back to Yan, and followed it with orders. “Take your squad and clear those houses - if they’re uninhabited, collapse them. The rest of the platoon to secure the perimeter.” 

She didn’t bother to confirm he understood. Yan was hardly balletic, but he wasn’t an imbecile. His men moved off as ordered. She kept watching the oasis. A relief, perhaps, that there weren’t people in the village. It made the task simpler, for all that it implied a greater awareness of her movements than she liked. And she wasn’t so naive as to think her actions tonight wouldn’t doom a community. She hoped some of them, at least, would seek help. The Reconstruction Bureau was there for that. It was why they were all there, and the heat welled in her gut again that they were forcing her to do this. Nowhere else had. No one else had been so uncomprising, so unwilling, so elusive. 

Dao-1 touched down behind her, and Dao-2 - the other airship - to its east, on the hill-side. Men and women spilled out, marshalled by officers. The reconnaissance planes had brought back photographs, and the sequence had been drilled into them. Thoroughness was the key to victory. 

There was a loud, sudden, crack, and high pitched animal squealing cut short. She didn’t start. A metalbender, detached from Yan’s squad, was driving spikes into the tribal animals’ brains in a regular pattern. Crack. Scream. Crack. Scream. The corpses would be sluiced with fuel and set alight. 

A knot of Gaoling men rushed past her, bearing her no heed, hauling a barrel to the edge of the lake. They uncapped and up-ended it, spilling more fuel out into the water, black-on-black, the thick chemical smell rolling out. Poisoning and permanently at that. From the south shore came a rumbling crash as the houses were scattered out into clods of dirt and earth. They could be rebuilt with ease, but any personal affects would be crushed. Something of a victory in that.

The whole process took no more than twenty minutes. By the end of it, the flyspeck settlement without a name was levelled, its water polluted, the air filled with the too-sweet stench of burning flesh undercut by eye-watering oil fire. 

She didn’t look back as she boarded the airship. The first step towards victory. Now to wait for the retaliation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The use of air power aside, this is a classic razzia in the French Algerian sense. The French conducted lightning raids, called razzia, on villages believed to support rebels during their conquest of Algeria from 1830-1847. If you do have institutional access (or can find a free copy) Thomas Rid’s ‘Razzia: A Turning Point in Modern Strategy’ is a fantastic paper on the subject - as well as providing excellent insight on the bureaux arabes, France’s method of civilian control. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546550903153449?journalCode=ftpv20


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tribes retaliate. Content warnings: aftermath of death

It took two days. 

Kuvira was in her command tent, redrafting a letter to Chief Tonraq on the possibilities of sending waterbenders to assist in the West Ranziu Teaching Hospital. It was not dependence, and never would be. She would make sure of it. But as a supplement, it had promise. Besides, Tonraq was a lever on the recuperating Avatar. That had value. 

Baatar was sitting across from her, working on the blueprints for a revised light rail system in Ba Sing Se. She hadn’t seen the purpose of it, at first, but his point that the existing system only allowed passage towards and away from the centre, not laterally within the rings, had been true and so blindingly obvious that her failure not to grasp it at once had put her in a bad mood. 

Every so often, he would glance up from his work. She made sure not to be looking at him when he did, but she could feel his gaze anyway. It was not uncomfortable. 

The radio’s squawking shattered the silence. Emergency band and frequency. She reached over and took the headset. 

“This is Kuvira. Report.” 

“Sir, there’s - “ the voice on the other end was fast, high with stress and youth. Kuvira cleared her throat. There was procedure and it was never more important than in crisis. The person on the other end regained some semblance of composure. “This is Lieutenant Nako, 22nd Kyoshi. Tribals overran Nadiza and killed the reconstruction team.” 

“Why was I not informed immediately?” Her voice was a whip. 

“They - we didn’t know until just now. There wasn’t a garrison in Nadiza, it’s far from the desert and - “ 

Baatar, spirits shine upon him, already had the map out, finger pointing on Nadiza. A short drive from the headquarters. She could walk the ground herself. She had to, had to be seen. 

“Understood, lieutenant,” she said. “I will be arriving to take personal command shortly. Out.” 

The headset clicked down. “I’ll get the staff jeep,” she said, thinking as she spoke. “Do you know where Varrick’s documover crew is?” 

He didn’t waste time on surprise or questions. “Touring the refugee accommodations at the moment.” Empty, still. No one had staggered out of the sands for help, and so they sat unused, fit for propaganda and little more. More raids were planned, and they’d fill in time. “I’ll fetch them.” 

She nodded and thanked him. He left, and she followed a few minutes later, dropping the finished letter to Tonraq off with the command staff and starting up the staff jeep, a low-slung grey vehicle with strong suspension. Needed for the task ahead of it - the roads were more suggestions than reality in the Si Wong. Another project for the engineers. She took the driver’s seat for herself. She couldn’t trust anyone else with that responsibility, not after the third assassination attempt. 

Baatar arrived a few moments later with the documover team, a man and a woman toting a bulky camera, bundled in a black bag. Behind them was their minder, in the pressed green fatigues of the Ba Sing Se infantry. She stiffened and saluted when she saw Kuvira, but it was waved down and they proceeded at pace. 

The jeep jolted over the roads towards Nadiza, dust rising behind it like a wake. Baatar was in the seat across from her. They’d driven out like this before, a pretext to spend more time together in Zaofu. He’d wanted a better sense of the possibilities for defensive architecture at the head of the valley, he’d explained to his father. To his credit, he’d brought a notepad with him. They hadn’t gotten much use out of it. 

But aside from the vehicle and his presence, there was little alike. The heat, the dust, the flies - none so oppressive as the silence. The message hadn’t been explicit, but it was enough to know they were driving into an abattoir. A reconstruction team killed. Unarmed, there to give food aid and learn more about the culture so they could be helped. Retaliation for the raid on the oasis, no doubt, and the thought that those savages - that the tribes, she caught herself, because when you thought of them as inferior you underestimated their power - judged it appropriate was shocking in its outrageousness. 

She’d expected an attack on her soldiers. Perhaps on herself, on the headquarters. She had been ready for that. 

Now she relished the thought. 

They reached Nadiza swiftly enough, stopping at roadblocks thrown up by the 22nd. They got through them swiftly enough. Lieutenant Nako appeared, sweating through her traditional warpaint - an anachronism to be eliminated, in Kuvira’s view, fit for the Fire Lord’s court and her pet bodyguards, not a modern nation, not that she would say such a thing. Not yet. Nako’s report was creditably to the point. As best they could determine, a pair of sand-sailers had come out of the dunes, following a wadi from the north to avoid the patrols. The sandbenders had leapt out and attacked immediately. 

The three bodies had been laid in the shadows of the village square. The documover crew set their camera rolling, the presenter murmuring pre-approved words about terrorism and sacrifice. Baatar looked sick as Kuvira knelt, checking over the corpses with professional swiftness and thoroughness. There was a slight blue tinge to their skin, and sand crusted around their mouths. One man’s beard, neatly coiffed in the latest style from the Sing Se parlours was caked in it. 

Choked to death on the element. 

She murmured a few words, commending them to the spirits. The beard struck her. She could imagine the man trimming it carefully, a vivid image almost too real in its sudden precision. He hadn’t expected this and he hadn’t deserved it. 

She stood. Baatar was breathing heavily. 

“I’m going to kill them,” he said, and she was taken aback at the tone of his voice, near shaking with rage.

“Contain yourself,” she said, almost automatically, a command. Regretted it. He didn’t seem to notice, his eyes staring at the wall. 

“I knew these people,” he said. “San. Mala. Pu Gatu. They were my friends.” 

“I know,” she said, stepping closer. The mover crew was still running, and soldiers were watching with the sort of unsubtle subtlety sentries perfected. They couldn’t afford an outburst. 

“They were my friends and they - “ His voice rose, fists clenched. 

She cut him off, a quick hug, squeezing him to her for a moment. Heartbeat to heartbeat, a reminder of why she didn’t do this too often because the temptation to stay in his arms was strong. She stepped back, cupping his cheek. “Baatar. I know. But not now and not here. There will be other opportunities - we just need to take them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unsurprisingly, Kuvira is really hypocritical.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuvira talks to a forcibly displaced person. 
> 
> Content warnings: forcible displacement, mentions of cultural assimilation, cultural chauvinism.

The army was placed on higher alert, and the raids intensified. It took four until they captured civilians. 

Kuvira stood against the wire fence at the edge of the reception field, watching them off-load from the airship, in a sullen mass. Dozens, at least. Maybe more. 

The Reconstruction Bureau was out in full force, tables set up in stations to a scheme Baatar and her had designed. Soldiers - from the Si Wong Auxiliaries, pulled off the outer patrol circuit at her orders to give the civilians a touch-stone - herded them, teased them out from the clump into a thin, snaking line. Here, ID documentation was assigned and records taken. There, clothing given in packs to replace anything that might have been destroyed in the raid. Army surplus, hard-wearing and rough-stitched, but better than nothing. A pair of workers pushed a handcart past her, not seeing or not caring, with sacks of rice. Food aid, for the first few days while the quartermasters assessed needs and established market links. 

She couldn’t help but smile at it all, bittersweet. These were the people the tribes rejected and killed, people brought from the across the nation with the intent and will and resources to help them in ways the Earth Queen or Raiko’s hand-picked successor in exile never would. It was a cheering thought and she indulged in it for a moment before setting about her business. 

She walked behind the line of workers to the first station, piled high with papers and stamps. One of the men staffing it, thick-set with the scraps of a beard on his cheeks, turned at her approach, and saluted. 

“Do we had a headman of some kind? A village chief?” she asked. 

He nodded once, a sharp motion. “Yes, sir. He’s over there,” he said, pointing to a wizened man in long, cream robes worked with subtle golden filigree, clashing with nut-brown skin, vigorously arguing with someone trying to give him a clothes pack. She thought there might have been a touch of Gan Jin influence in the way he styled himself. Huan would know. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as if he’d ever answered her letters. Su probably burnt them. 

“Thank you,” she replied. “And remember the grooming standards.”

She left him sputtering an apology in her wake and found her target. 

“Are you the village headman?” she asked the man, cutting the finger-jabbing, shouting argument dead. He looked at her, eyes widened very slightly. Fear. She was not so naive as to think it wasn’t deserved. That didn’t stop it rankling, even so. 

“I am,” he said, with a plausible attempt at high Sing Se diction. Gan Jin for certain. “What do you want?” 

She smiled with thin pleasantry. “To talk. May we - “ she gestured away from the queue forming behind them, out into the open space beyond the stations. He followed her with no little reluctance. 

“First, let me offer my personal apologies for our actions,” she said. A needed thing. She wasn’t guilty about it, but that didn’t dispel how regretful the affair was. “They were necessary, but punitive. Regardless of any other factors, know that your people will be well treated here. They will get all the help they need, and more.” 

His gaze was tired, and angry, and underlaying it all was an exhausted, manic fear. Hauled from his bed in the night, fire and smoke. She couldn’t sympathise, but she did understand. “How can we trust you?” he asked, bleakly. 

“Look around you,” she replied, struggling to keep the heat from her voice, and lambasting herself for the difficulty of the effort. Something about him was getting under her skin. Wasn’t it obvious? Yes, they had destroyed the village. Unfortunate. But the whole might of the nation had been thrown into seeing them well cared for. Next to the landing field reared the stubby towers of their new homes, far finer and grander things than the lakeside hovels. 

He spat on the sand. “All I see is chains. You even seek to…uniform us like your soldiers.” 

She bit back her first response, intemperate and unfitting, that if they were eager to go naked like animals they were free to. But they weren’t, of course. Exposure would bring a whole host of maladies, not least sun-stroke and dehydration. 

“They are stop-gap replacements. Please inform the Bureau officials of your requirements, and they will do their best to meet them.” 

“My requirement is our release.” 

She did not deign that with a response, moving past the issue. Just ravings and defiance, sound and fury rather than acceptance and adaptation. There was little noble in it. “While I am sure most of your benders are out in the high desert, it would be valuable to inform us of any trainees or teachers in the community.” 

None had tried to fight back or escape, not in the village or in the airship from the captain’s report. But that was in the face of a hundred men and women, and the shock of pre-dawn violence. Who knew what might fester if given time? She was not about to find out, if she had the choice. Pre-emption, speed, violence of action. On the field and off. 

“No,” he said, folding his arms in his instinctual emphasis. 

She sighed. Petty recalcitrance, the kind of thing Opal might have deployed. Or herself, in younger years. Unworthy of a man of his status and position. “We will find out. The sooner, the better, before one of them tries to fight back and the situation escalates.” 

“You’ll kill them.” 

She couldn’t stop the surprise and distaste spilling across her expression. “Absolutely not. We will employ those capable, and provide training to those not.” Training a fair sight better than whatever the tribes might have provided, she thought. No doubt they had their talents, and sandbending its value. But modernity called for more than sand-sailers and storms. 

The chief looked away from her, then, gaze drifting out over the dunes. Perhaps, she thought, trying to find the smoke marking where his home had once lain. A melancholy thought, but there was no place for sentiment. He turned back, eyes dimmer somehow, the defiance leached. Good. 

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll tell you.” 

Kuvira smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While flying them places is a bit ahistorical, there is a long history of forced displacement of civilian populations into areas under counterinsurgent control. The Spanish were the first in modern history to do this on a major scale, I believe, in their war against Cuban rebels in the 1890s. This particular example draws from the Malayan Emergency, where British forces forcibly rehoused Chinese minority communities who had previously lived on marginal land and support the insurgents into the ‘New Villages’ - tightly policed settlements. The Americans followed a similar model in Vietnam with the Strategic Hamlet program, although they weren’t as effective. I have Kuvira’s forces being somewhat more generous than the historical reality might suggest on the basis that she has this whole ‘improve/uplift’ part of her philosophy - but it’s still very much grounded in cultural chauvinism and a security-first approach. 
> 
> If you want to read more on these case studies, I recommend John Nagl’s book ‘Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife’, which examines why Britain won in Malaya and America lost in Vietnam. He makes some interesting arguments about organisational theory and how militaries learn, but a lot of its value to me is that it draws on a wealth of primary sources, including interviews with senior leaders, about the campaigns.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Problems brew in the northern Earth Kingdom. Also, hello Opal!

Baatar walked in and put the letter on her desk. She raised an eyebrow without looking away from the present report. “I have staff officers for that,” she said. 

“You do,” he agreed, sitting opposite from her, the legs of the chair creaking a little. Royal Army surplus. It was probably older than her, knowing Hou-Ting. “But they’re busy, this is urgent, and I wanted an excuse.” 

“You should come up with better excuses,” she said, putting her papers down. “You were good at it. You should get back into the practice.” The mock severity was almost too much to maintain, she could feel the smile curling at the corner of her mouth. Then he grinned, broad and open, and that set her smiling too. Like an idiot. “Stop that, it’s distracting,” she said, not sure if she was speaking to him or herself. “What’s in the letter?” 

The smile faded like mist in the sun. “Dispatch from General Tsu in the north-east. The Red Lotus and People’s Front of Inisa seem to be putting aside their differences.” 

Hers joined his. She took the note from unresisting hands, opened, and read it quickly. Divisional-sized force massing in the Haifi Valley went one line. Local forces of suspect loyalty - possible infiltration said another. Situation worrying but not yet critical, reinforcements of value to maintenance of current dispositions was the the elegantly understated conclusion. She set it aside and sat back in the chair. 

The raids were going well. It had been three weeks, and two dozen raided settlements. The enemy’s activity had fallen. Some had turned themselves in willingly. Others had spent their fury in futile attacks against positions by now well-versed and drilled for the defence. But most had simply melted away into the desert. And yet. There was a hard core of resistance, out in the far desert, their settlements hidden better and undoubtedly stoutly held. A withdrawal to shore up Tsu would reignite the region just as enemy’s back was being broken. 

“Your assessment?” she asked, shortly. 

“We can’t transfer any troops from this theatre yet, and the south isn’t in full compliance yet,” he said. “But, the 67th Airship Squadron is currently refitting Gaoling. We could rush them out here and hold them as ready transports to support Tsu. It’s only three days flight.” 

“Good idea,” she said. She’d discounted the 67th. Refits were her domain in the loosest sense, Baatar reigned supreme there. A hole in her knowledge, and she was lucky she didn’t need to fill it. “And how are the refugees? Unless visiting them was also an excuse?” 

The very tips of his ears turned red. “Not an excuse, no,” he said, with commendable calm. “They’re settling in well. A local market is springing up, and the retraining is effective.” 

“Benders?” 

“Only seven, all young. The teachers are making steady work of it, but slow.” 

She discounted it with a wave of her hand. “The provision is sufficient. Now, what about - “ 

Her words were cut off as the radio sprang to life, spitting and chattering to itself. She took it up. “Kuvira. Report.” 

“Sir,” came a young voice coarsened with the faintest trace of Zhang accent. “This is ADC. We have a bison inbound, ETA 10 minutes. The alert fighters have been scrambled. Orders, over?” 

“Visual identification, over?” she asked. Baatar was watching her with that admiring cast to his face that made him look like an especially unfortunate puppy. 

“Wait one, over.” The seconds ticked by with weight insufficient for their duration. The radio crackled again. “Tentative ID as Juicy. Shall we vector fighters to verify, over?” 

Kuvira suppressed the urge to sigh. Unless something irregular was happening, and that could never be ruled out, that bison - easily identifiable from its illness - meant Opal. Which, in turn, meant that she was coming to talk to her. Or perhaps Tenzin or Su had sent her. The implications were the same. “No. Stand the fighters down, we are in no danger. Prepare for it to land. Out.” 

She turned to Baatar. His posture was stiff and fixed. He knew just as well as she did what that bison meant. She squeezed his hand. 

“It’ll be alright,” she said. 

His smile was wan. Brave attempt nonetheless. “I’m sure it will be,” he said, and rose. She followed him out of the tent, past the open half-shelters of the duty staff officers, out to the cleared ground to the left. 

The bison loomed larger, going from dot to fully realised beast faster than it seemingly ought to be capable of. It touched down, and promptly sneezed, a glob of mucus dripping onto the hard-packed dirt. Vile, Kuvira thought, and she knew Baatar felt the same. The first time Opal had come to talk to them, he’d gotten drunk - she couldn’t judge, she’d done the same - and he’d said that if an airship or jeep was leaking, he’d fix it. Not tolerate it. She was inclined to agree. 

A figure in burgundy and grey vaulted down from the saddle. 

Kuvira met her halfway, the beast’s lungs labouring like bellows as a backdrop to their conversation. 

“Opal,” she said. “A wonderful surprise. I trust Su is well?” 

“Like you care,” Opal snapped back. 

“I did stop sending letters a few months ago,” Kuvira acknowledged, airily. “But she never replied, so I didn’t think much of it.” She hadn’t been upset when the reality of Su’s silence had struck home. Being upset was something she could not and would not permit herself. But it had been…disappointing. She was building, they were all building, something new. Something wonderful. A Zaofu for the whole nation. That her mentor wanted no word of it diminished her in Kuvira’s eyes. 

Baatar joined them. “It’s good to see you,” he said, the strain and lie obvious even to inexpert ears - let alone Kuvira’s. 

“I’m sure,” said Opal, wintry. She turned to address Kuvira more directly, seemingly determined to disregard her brother. She clenched a fist, her metal responding to the anger, rippling very slightly. She pressed it back down. Opal was a brat, had always been one. Fact of life and the world. “I come with a petition from the Ghash, Peula, and Balatra tribes. They seek a peaceful settlement. As a precondition, they demand you release the prisoners you’ve taken.” 

“The refugees we’re accommodating?” Kuvira asked, the false innocence calculated to get under Opal’s skin. She gestured to the right, towards the new town arisen from the desert. “As an Air Nomad observer, you are of course free to inspect our facilities. I assure you, we are providing a high standard of care.” 

“You stole them from their homes.” 

“Homes that were no longer practicable.” Kuvira had half a mind to write a note to Tenzin on the qualities of the training he provided his personnel. This performance was shoddy, especially as Opal was acting in her official capacity. At the least the last time, that disastrous time, she’d come at Su’s behest. One final effort at control without understanding. 

“Because you burnt them down!” 

“Opal - “ Baatar tried to break in. She gestured angrily at him, swiping him down, words tight with fury. 

“You can’t hide what you’re doing from the world, Kuvira.” 

Kuvira’s tone curdled with scorn and confidence. The Si Wong was not Zaofu and this was not a squabble over a block fort or breakfast. She had mastered cities, broken rebellion. “I have done more for my nation in a week than you have in your entire life. They are on the back foot. If they wish to negotiate, I am open to it. But we will not undo the progress we have made.” 

“You call this progress.” It wasn’t a question, rather a judgement and an imprecation rolled into one, ignorance and hypocrisy. Kuvira’s fury was ice cold and sharper for it. How dare this girl, who had never been forced to do what she’d been done, who’d been handed all she wanted and more, say such things? 

“She does and so do I,” Baatar spoke up, with resolution and a coherent determination. “We don’t have the luxuries you do. Hard choices have to be made.” 

Kuvira took over the argument from him. “My headquarters location will not change. If you signal it appropriately, the leaders from Ghash, Peula, and Balatra will have free passage to negotiations. Return with them or don’t. No matter. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a war to win.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Opal in this chapter was pretty difficult. It’s clear in canon that even three years later, she’s still really quite angry with both Kuvira and Baatar - and, given what she’s learnt about their recent actions from the tribal leaders, she has every right to be! But I was a bit concerned that I was straying into a situation of making the advocate for human rights come across the irrational one; to that, all I can say is that this scene is very different from Opal’s perspective. 
> 
> General Tsu’s letter is partially inspired by Brigadier Tom Brodie of the Gloucestershire Regiment at the Battle of the Imjin River in 1951. When asked if he required reinforcements by the American general in command of the sector, he admitted that things were ‘a bit sticky.’ American failure to understand British understatement hampered reinforcement to the regiment - who, 600 strong, fought alone against 30,000 Chinese troops, losing nearly their entire force as prisoners of war. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1285708.stm


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negotiations commence. 
> 
> Content warnings: cultural chauvinism, some violence.

Kuvira was unimpressed by the tribal leaders’ finery. 

It was designed with that effect, she was sure. All three - men, and no surprise there - were dressed in ornate babban riga, wide-sleeved, flowing robes. White, in base colour, but each was shot through with half-a-hundred dyes in bewildering patterns she had neither the time nor inclination to parse. One of the intelligence staff probably had. All she knew was that dyes like that weren’t native to the Si Wong. This was the fruits of expensive import, while they let their people subsist in dust and squalor. 

Opal walked ahead of them, shoes clacking on the hardwood decking of the tent. None of them, not the leaders, her, or Baatar, had earth or metal on them, and the floor would curtail bending the ground. 

Of course, she had made sure to have a handful of loose nails under her chair. She wasn’t an idiot. 

“Kuvira,” she said, curtly. “These are Chiefs Lek, Tazi, and Skali, of the Peula, Ghash, and Balatra respectively.” 

They took seats opposite. Lek was the oldest, Skali the youngest. He seemed particularly agitated. The absence of his element, in likelihood. 

“A pleasure,” Kuvira lied. “I am Kuvira, and this is my second in command, Baatar. I understand you seek terms.” 

“We do,” said Lek, voice deep and resonant. One used to command. “What would you offer us?” 

Skali looked askance at him, from the corner of his eye. Kuvira recalled that the Balatra and the Peula had had their fair share of conflicts. That was a rift worth exploitation.

“An end to the fighting,” she said, fixing Lek with her gaze. “Free passage for our engineers through the Raihani Depression - “ 

Skali cut her off, voice high and tight. “Unacceptable!” 

Tazi put out a moderating hand, and said in solicitous tones, “You must understand, Uniter, that the Raihani is sacred ground. If it were…sullied, the spirits of our ancestors would be cast adrift.” 

Baatar cut in, half-talking to Kuvira rather than the dignitaries. “Our initial survey teams uncovered no evidence of spiritual activity. But,” he allowed, “their work was curtailed.” A bloodless, diplomatic way of saying what all knew had actually happened - all perhaps Opal, but if she had not bothered to appraise herself of those first murders, it was her failing. 

“We defended our land,” said Skali. Kuvira could feel the vicious pleasure dripping from his every word. Here was an enemy in the truest sense, one who could not accord to reason.

“I’m sure you did,” Opal said, re-inserting herself back into the conversation soothingly. “But there are ways to do honour to the spirits without sacrificing industrial progress. Yangchen’s Festival in Republic City may provide a model.” 

By the spirits, Kuvira thought, a cogent and reasonable line of argument. 

Baatar leant forward, engaged at the prospect of a practical challenge, just like he always was, and Kuvira stifled a smile at it. 

“The railway has a minimal footprint,” he said. “Perhaps if we built some sort of ritual into the departure process of each train, we could placate your ancestors?” 

There was a nodding of heads at that, Lek in the lead with calculated wisdom. Even Skali sat back, begrudging. It was the shame, she knew, that the next demand would shatter any consensus. But Baatar and her had discussed it and agreed it. Committments from these people meant little, especially if they discontinued the resettlement programs. 

“We will also require,” she said, and the tone alone was clue enough, “the destruction or impounding of your sand-sailers.” 

The silence brimmed with fury. Anger etched itself into the leader’s faces like carvings in granite. 

“Why?” asked Opal, disappointed anger bubbling. In another time, Kuvira might have been sorry to rob her of the diplomatic triumph. But this was reality and practicality. The nation had to be defended. 

“Your sailers,” she explained, “give you immense mobility in the high desert. Without their removal, nothing obstructs you from resuming your rebellion.” 

“What of our word of honour?” asked Tazi quietly. 

“Honour requires trust. We have none. Besides,” she smiled, briefly and without humour. “None of us wants war to return to the Si Wong. We must have a permanent solution.” The sand-sailers were innovative designs, and they had their utility in trade. But the risk was too great. Roads and railways were far more organised and safer. 

“The wood - “ Lek began, and cut himself off. “That is your purpose, isn’t it?” 

“It is,” she confirmed. No harm in admission - no benefit in evasion. Baatar had gotten a look at a captured sailer four days ago, admiring the design. Only certain kinds of wood would do, would last in the punishing sands. Replacements would be difficult to acquire, and impossible to do so covertly. It was an innovative solution. 

“Many of the sailers were passed from father to son,” said Opal. Her struggle for calm was commendable. “They are sacred in their own right.” 

“We appreciate the supply chain issues,” Kuvira replied, dryly. “That is the purpose of this demand. But we can impound them, rather than destroy them, and make them available for rites as deemed appropriate. We have no wish to destroy the culture and religion of the Si Wong.” 

Not, she reflected, that there was much to destroy in the first place. 

“But you will,” Skali said. He was calm, she thought, unusually so. Her chi flexed out to the nails, just a little. Just in case. “Everything rests on the sand-sailers. Everything you have not already tyrannised and destroyed.” 

“Perhaps,” she replied. “But some things have to change. If Korra were with us,” she emphasised the name, reminding the tribals that she knew the Avatar, that she was in some passing sense a friend - or at least providing the implication of it, “then it might be different. But so long as we are deprived of her guidance and presence, we must face the world as it is. I cannot guarantee the security of my people while you possess the sailers.” 

“It seems we are at an impasse,” said Lek, grief suffusing. 

“No,” said Skali. “We aren’t.” 

At that last, he thrust his arm forward, sudden and rapid like a striking snake. A bolt of earth ripped clean through his sleeve, whistling across the table straight for Kuvira. 

She shifted to the side, instinct, pulling her metal up from the floor with one fist - 

But his aim was true and the distance small. 

It slammed into her chest, shockwaves of agony, blood spurting out. 

She saw the rest in flashes. Tazi grasping Skali’s arms. Opal, staff in hand, a wall. Baatar. On the radio. The only sensible one, she thought, woozily. Figures in green rushing in. Crossbows snapping. 

Silence and blackness.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuvira and Baatar discuss matters of state and paperwork. Actions of state are then carried out.
> 
> Content warnings: mentions of war crimes, mentions of civilian deaths.

She woke in a hospital bed. Clean linen, well-sprung, a clock in military time on the wall ahead. She knew these things without seeing them, without thinking. Standardisation. 

What was decidedly not standard was the rumpled figure in the chair next to her bed. She blinked bleary eyes. “Baatar?” she said, voice weak and mouth dry. She tried to sit up, just a fraction of an inch, and - fuck. Perhaps not. 

Baatar was leaning forward at once. “Kuvira,” he said, thickly, as if there was nothing else in the world to say. “Thank the spirits.” 

“Thank modern medicine,” she said. He shook his head and smiled, just a little. There were bags under his eyes. How long had he been there? Irresponsible not to be well-rested. She understood the concern, but a doctor could have summoned him upon waking. “Help me sit up.” 

He complied, piling pillows from a crate at the side of the bed - another non-standard feature, some detached part of her brain noted - to make a backrest, holding sides as she moved the painful inches to a position of some dignity. He handed her a glass of water, which she took and drank in greedy gulps, hand shaking from disuse. It was undignified, and she revolted against it despite the ironclad knowledge that wounded pride could not heal flesh. 

“How long?” 

“Four days,” he said. “The healers put you under while you worked. If it had been an inch lower…” 

She coughed, and pressed down a gasp at the agony, He shifted as if to assist her, as if anything he could do would help with internal damage. She forestalled him with a raised hand. “It wasn’t. They’re dead?” 

“All three,” he confirmed. “The guards were thorough.” 

“Opal?” 

“She tried to stop Skali. Too late, of course. I let her go.” 

“Good.” She collapsed back into the pillows. “She’s a brat but not a killer. What have you told the army?” 

“An assassination attempt during parlay, all the perpetrators killed, you wounded but not seriously.”

“That was the right response, thank you.” A protocol for this had been developed. The army needed to be informed, of course, but the less information loose, the better. Control in all things. She could feel her own control returning, chi flowing unblocked, warm and reassuring. “Four days. Can’t imagine my back log.” 

“You don’t need to imagine, I brought it with me,” he said, and fit actions to words, assembling a wooden contraption that hooked over both sides of the bed - she had some vague memory of Varrick talking about it, a portable desk of some kind. This, Baatar stacked with paperwork; and a small sweet-cake. 

“I’m surprised the doctors let you bring that in here,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. He cut right to the point. He always had and always would. No useless questions and worries. It was why she loved him. Some part of her intimated that she didn’t tell him that enough. She filed it away for future inspection. 

“Well - “ 

“You didn’t smuggle it in, did you?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. The one form of expression she had untrammelled by pain. The rest would return, were returning. 

He snorted. “No. I just explained that if work wasn’t here waiting for you, you’d go to find it. Besides, there is news from the north. Tsu’s 15th Armoured was pushed out of the Haifi this morning.” 

“You should have led with that,” she said, without heat, turning tired gears to calculation. “If Haifi is gone, then the rest of Inisa is lost too.” The state of Inisa was barren and mountains, scraps of farmland carved into the sides of hills in stepped terraces. The Haifi Valley, running down its centre, was the only large lowland in the state, the only place that could support real agriculture, and connect the peak-top settlements to boot. 

“Most of it,” he said. “Shang’s sending what he can spare from the south, and we’re mustering another corps in Sing Se. But - “ 

She didn’t have to interrupt him. They both knew what he meant. They needed to resolve the situation here, and soon. If only those chiefs had seen the folly of their resistance. If only she had rejected the negotiations, proceeded with purpose and force, if only - nothing. No place for sentiment. “The military situation here?” 

“Killing the leaders put a halt on most enemy activity. We’ve identified eight villages remaining in the high desert. The enemy have pulled back to defend them, and we don’t have the airship capacity to lift enough troops there, even with the 67th.” 

Someone else would have make a joke, then, about Baatar not precisely giving her a pleasant situation to wake up. She might have, herself, back before all this. Instead, she just sighed, and stretched her legs out tentatively, bracing for the pain. It was just in her chest, and dimmer each time. The healers did good work. She’d be able to walk soon, to bend even sooner, and the relief - even unasked for, irrational, unneeded - would have bowled down. 

“We’ll reduce them from the air,” she said. “They have had every opportunity to surrender. If we had more time, we would attack on the ground. If - “ they were unneeded justifications. Or at least, unneeded by him, and there was no other audience. It was the only practicable path. The arithmetic of the conflict dictated it. “Thank you for waiting for me,” she said, instead, diverting. “I wouldn’t - I wouldn’t have wanted you to have to make that choice.” 

He took her hand in his, squeezing a little too hard, as if it were a lifeline and he a drowning man. She didn’t object. 

They sat for a long minute. 

“After this,” he said. “We should go on holiday.” 

She couldn’t help but laugh a little, and stopped as pain juddered at her. “After what?” 

“There will be an end to this,” he said, determined. “I know it will take time. But you can do it, and there will be an end to the fighting. When you can rest in a way that doesn’t involve a near mortal wound.” The words were light but she felt the fear beneath them, deep inky black; bur the faith, in his eyes, his voice, that she could fix it - that she would, he would be with her through it all - counterbalanced it. Refined it. Banished it. 

“Lean down closer,” she said. He did, a little perplexed. 

When he was near enough, she surged up to kiss him.

Not all ambushes had to be painful.

\---

The final suppression of the Peula, Balatra, and Ghash tribes took nineteen hours.

Airships from the 67th and 12th Squadrons, assigned to the Si Wong Air Division, were dispatched the morning after the order was given. Both were transport wings, and so hasty work had been done through the night, under Baatar Beifong Jr’s personal direction, to retrofit them with bomb bays. They were loaded with a mixture of incendiary devices and oil drums for the poisoning of oases, and accompanied by fighter escorts from the 3rd, 7th, and 19th Squadrons - a full wing, in the Imperial parlance, although the foundation of those reforms was still eight months away at this point. 

Soldiers from the 22nd Kyoshi and 14th Gaoling regiments, accompanied by Si Wong auxiliaries - principally from the Dolon tribe, long enemies of the Ghash - established a perimeter around the airbases, preventing tribal observers from seeing the force before it lofted up high enough to evade detection. They flew at the edge of tolerance; some historians claim setting a new record; on Kuvira’s express orders. 

The force took nine hours to arrive, each airship peeling off in turn to hover above their targets. Once all were in position, the go-word, ‘Himih’ - the name of a water spirit from northern Ranziu State - was issued by radio. The airships descended to attack height at once. 

Records from the tribal side of the action are sparse - while the peoples of the High Si Wong possess a rich oral tradition, the violence of the suppression and the assimilation policies which followed damaged it considerably. As best as modern historians can ascertain, there was indeed no warning. Around the villages named Blue, Green, Red, Purple, and Brown by Kuviran forces - their names did not live on in posterity - the tribes fled into the desert on sand-sailers. They were allowed to depart unmolested. In Orange 1 and 2 - a pair of villages surrounding a large oasis - and Pink, the tribes fought back. Sandbenders created obscuring storms, while others bent prepared darts up towards the airships. However, these efforts proved broadly ineffective. The tribes lacked the long-range capabilities required to engage on an even footing. 

The Kuviran airship crews responded in similar, methodical style in both cases, identifying the central oases and any livestock pens. Into the former, they dropped munitions to poison the water. Into the latter, incendiary and high explosive to deny the animals to the tribes. In some cases, unexpended ordnance was released onto civilian accommodations, although at tribunal, both Kuvira and Baatar insisted that such actions were in direct contravention of orders. The sporadic nature of these attacks set against the systematic reduction of the other targets been argued by some to lend credence to this claim; but that debate need not detain us at this juncture. 

The operation took about an hour, after which the airships - with their fighter escorts - turned for home, arriving nine hours later. Kuviran casualties were light. Airship Dao-3 from 12th Squadron was holed in the fighting, and two engineers killed. One fighter aircraft, flying too low in the face of the storm, stalled and was lost. Tribal casualties are estimated in the range of two hundred combatants and seventy civilians, although the character of these estimates is contested. Some scholars claim that the true figure may be considerably higher. 

It was a significant blow to High Si Wong civilisation. Although the immediate casualties were comparatively light, the deliberate poisoning of oases and killing of valuable cattle destroyed the economic bedrock of the Peula, Balatra, and Ghash. Fighting continued at a low level for some months, but the back of the resistance - without safe bases of operation - was broken. Many turned themselves in, and were granted amnesty as part of the assimilation and resettlement programs. This campaign is understood as a key stepping stone towards both the compliance of the north and the establishment of the re-education camp system. 

\- An excerpt from _By Steel and Sword: A Military History of Kuvira’s Campaigns _by Roh Gannor, Professor Emeritus at Ba Sing Se University, 221 AG, Year of the Ox.__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s a wrap! Hope you enjoyed, and if you have any thoughts, please leave a comment or come yell at me on Tumblr @the-hopefulpenguin. My next fic will be something happier than this. I think.


End file.
